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History:
"The Connecticut Land Company
was formed in order to sell the area that included The Western Reserve Territory. It
had taken the Congress of of the American States ten years to develop a plan for organized
settlement of the vast land "given" to Connecticut by King Charles II of
England. Many people and soldiers, and their survivors, were owed reparation and/or
pensions for service in the Revolutionary War.
The investors were waiting for Congress to debate how the new
"territories" would be governed and divided into states. They were aware of the
historic undertaking for the fledgling country. Two momentous decisions came before land
could be settled. Public schooling was guaranteed, and the new states were brought
in to be slave free. Three million acres were set aside, reserved for payment of
damages incurred in Connecticut.
As soon as the sale of land became legal, there had to be an organized way for
investors to choose their parcels of property. The original boundaries for the State
of Ohio would have included Ohio, Indiana, and a large portion of Michigan. This was
too large an area of wilderness to govern, so Ohio was drawn with its present boundaries.
Before it was surveyed, the land was divided into ranges, with BROOKFIELD in the
TRUMBULL RANGE, called RANGE No. 1.
A lottery was held and the seventy-second draft was made by SAMUEL C. HINCKLEY of
Township No. 4. He paid $12,903.23 for the 15,305 acres, plus a lot containing 1,346
acres in Range No. 12 . A township is five miles square. And henceforth and forever
it became BROOKFIELD, OHIO, USA."
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| Frederick Masury came to
the southwest corner of Brookfield Township in 1903 to establish his
explosives factory, Masurite Company.
He had graduated from Columbia University where he majored in chemical
engineering. While working for the DuPont company he developed a
much safer explosive then dynamite. He felt he would never be able
to develop its potential if he stayed with DuPont. The decision to
come to this area was made because of the many stone quarries and
coal mines where the explosive could be used.
In a very short time after the establishment of the factory a mill
village grew up around it and of course this village was
called Masury.
The factory operated until 1911 then the product fell into disfavor
because of the instability of ammonium nitrate based explosives.
- by Elizabeth Boozer
From the 1996 Bicentennial Celebration
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